* (2:17) Dan’s idea about “cabinet GMing” that Brodeur, Scott, and the Germans are trying to steal. Having other GMs handle the actions of major NPCs to keep their actions independent and unpredictable.

* (12:27) Today’s topic: VaMinion steals Dan’s idea, which was stolen from Wayne, which was stolen from Scott. Shielding a character from certain risks by virtue of who or what they are. The prior discussion on the X card can be found on this episode and across several pages of the accompanying forum discussion.

Comments (5)

What you guys were talking about regarding other GMs playing the movers and shakers in the game world was covered by Tabletop Treasures (now Gnome Stew) back 2007. I am glad to see the idea is still popping up (great minds). I have always wanted to do it but I could never get it coordinated properly. Lack of effort on my end. I was trying to devise a point system where players could allocate three points to five categories – recruitment, resources, fame, etc… but I never pinned down what I wanted exactly, and the the other GMs I was talking had different ideas that I was juggling with. I would be very interested in hearing more about how it works out.

Thanks for sharing this episode. I haven’t quite run into the specific “Weapon X Card” issue, but I have found myself pulling punches for thematic reasons. Specifically, I have written a collection of Call of Cthulhu horror scenarios set during the American Civil War. Many people have very strong feelings about who the “good guys” and “bad guys” were during that war, and sometimes it feels pretty uncomfortable hitting one side or the other with the hammer of the cosmic horror nihilistic perspective. But part of my goal in writing the scenarios is to introduce more complicated moral perspectives based on historical details. For example, the mirror to Dan’s mention that Stonewall Jackson was an abolitionist is that William T. Sherman was a pretty severe opponent of racial equality (in fact he seemed to be anti-slavery mostly because it required whites to live too closely with blacks). And yet he nonetheless did more than almost any general to directly liberate slaves from bondage.

another_germanJanuary 15th, 2017 at 6:35 am

…not that it’s in any way a loss. While I can second that the Eskapodcast (the name being a combination of the german word for escapism and the “podcast” and spoken something like “ess-kah podcast”) is quite entertaining, the Dark Eye is a quite generic D&D clone (with the notable difference that you have to roll low on the d20 to succeed). Its “success” is largely due to it having been the first and for a long time only commercially distributed RPG in germany. There was another (percentile dice based´( RPG called “Midgard” at the time (early 80s), but it never took off.

another_germanJanuary 15th, 2017 at 6:40 am

sorry, I was referring to Alex’s post about the Eskapodcast and the “Dark Eye” not being talked about with my “not a loss” remark, not to Ethan’s comment